Our view: Keep Thanksgiving forever in your heart

Remember it today, Black Friday, and all the crowded shopping days ahead when, battling the bargain hunters, you are tempted to toss all of humanity onto an ash heap of selfishness and greed.

Remember it next week when the political candidates begin filing their petitions seeking statewide and other positions and you become tempted to see government as an unruly source of argument, conflict, betrayal and corruption.

Remember it the next time any ugly event in our society -- whether some disgusting new sexual harassment claim or a deadly act of pure human evil -- threatens to poison your appreciation for the blessedness of life, the joys of family and the fundamental decency of humankind.

We travel back to 1979 and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Spock has just survived a mind-meld that allowed him to see the cold planet of V'ger, a living machine with "knowledge that spans this universe" and he, the ultimate disciple of logic, describes in a handclasp with Captain Kirk the key to understanding human life.

"This simple feeling," he wheezes, "is beyond V'ger's comprehension."

This simple feeling, this awareness of our connection to a beautiful world, this rush of blood to the face is the defining quality of Thanksgiving. This is what appreciation feels like.

Remember it.

No, it will not be easy. Our days are filled with an unending stream of anxieties -- spouses, bosses, bills, illnesses, social media, traffic, politics and so much more. But these are events and situations that decorate life. They don't define it.

They cannot be ignored. But they are not worth remembering. What we must recall are these fleeting moments in which we get to experience the pure joy that is the source of all life's richness and wonder.

"This is the day the Lord has made," the Psalmist of ancient Israel says in Psalms 118, Verse 24. "Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

The poet was not speaking, of course, about some particular day set aside for feasting and celebration. He was speaking about every day, and his sentiment applies to every faith and every era.

As we share in our feasts and celebrations today, we pay homage to that which nourishes us at the very core of life. Acknowledge it, yes. Celebrate it, of course.

But, above all, in the midst of all the temptations and aggravations that will follow in the days, weeks, months and year ahead, remember it.